Diplomacy is Scary
From the journal of Erian Ilphelkiir I arrived home from my first diplomatic mission today – I accompanied Cyren (our Governor of Diplomacy) on a journey to the Duergar I first encountered some weeks back in company with Fizzwidget, as I related in another place. Also joining us were Azrael, Fr Isaac Brown, and Terrence the Librarian (I swear he looks more sickly every time I see him). Our intent was to begin the process of uniting the Free Peoples in the area, so as to bolster ourselves against the growing threat of Balthasaar from the north. To this end, we brought with us a significant amount of treasure, and as many of our original party as we could, hoping that the services rendered them in the past would dispose the dwarves towards us in friendly wise. Once returned undergrouond, it was apparent that the resistance had had some significant successes. The city was once again buzzing, with not a curfew-enforcement drone in sight. Children roamed the streets freely. There was one very noticeable difference this time, though – I received a number of strange, suspicious stares everywhere we went. No one else was subject to this scrutiny, or, may I say, disapproval. I decided to shroud my face and hang back. Stopping for refreshment and gossip at a local pub (I ate my own food, as underground preparations can be sketchy, and it was clear that those around me wished me a degree of ill), we learned that our original impressions of the war on the automatons were correct – significant advances, the city more or less held steady. Part of this was due to the assistance of some newcomers in town: animated suits of armour, referred to as “the Footmen,” from a mysterious “friendly” power, in return for the promise of unspecified services in the future. And as if that didn’t sound shady enough, the dwarves’ former allies, the Drow, distrusted this offer of assistance enough to cause a rupture in the united command. A civil war of sorts had broken out, pitting the Drow against the Dwarves, in addition to resisting the further incursions of the Automaton Army. This explained the hostile attitude toward me. We went to pay a visit to our old friend Ronan, who turned out to be holding a position of high command in the Duergar armed forces. He was happy to see us, but it was plain that he was far less happy about the way the war was progressing. The Footmen seemed to be more concerned with taking Drow prisoners than stopping Automatons, and he himself was suspicious of the commander of the empty suits. He told us it would take some time before he could get us an audience with the High Command, and that we should cool our heels in town for a day or two. I believe Azrael made good use of his stealth abilities to pick up additional information, whereas Cyren and Fr Brown needed to maintain a respectable front. I did not wish to be seen, so Terrence and I thought we might check and see if the Duergar had any kind of library in the city. Our joy at discovering that such a place existed was immediately tempered by the unpleasant knowledge that it lay in the no-man’s-land beyond the dwarven front lines. However, the thought of such knowledge lying unattended and un-cared-for so near by was too compelling, so we slipped through the entrenchments and culled a few tomes. They were abandoned, really – no one was claiming them as property, so you couldn’t really call it stealing! Regrouping in our assigned quarters, we shared what we had learned. There was no doubt in any of our minds that the Footmen were none other than Balthasaar’s agents, and that the less influence he had over the underground free peoples, the better for us. But how to win the Dwarves to our side, when this help had already proven so seducing as to sunder them from their former allies? In the dead of night, Ronan came to us in disarray – he had fallen into disgrace by cussing out the Master of the Footmen, and High Command had dismissed him from his post. He seemed afraid for his life. It seemed that there was a house from which the animated armour appeared to originate, and where they re-congregated each evening. It was decided that we should search this house for incriminating evidence during the time when the Footmen were away and active in the battles, in order to leverage our position. The house was dark. No one could see inside at all, not even me, though I have trained my eye to pierce even magical darkness. I correctly interpreted this as meaning that the house was nothing more than a teleportation portal point on the inside. We tried to test the limits of this theory by seeing how long I could maintain contact with someone who had passed through the window, but I lost track, even telepathically, as soon as my companions were inside. There was nothing else to do but for all of us to follow. Once inside, we were forced to fight a number of the Footmen, who fought with swords made of flames, similar to ones brought back to town by Azrael, Cyren and others who had triumphed over them before. Once they had been dispatched, we began to explore the house systematically, eventually finding ourselves in a secret cellar, seemingly empty of everything except a covering of dark mist on the floor. We began tapping the floor with our staves, checking for more secrets… when I suddenly found myself snatched from our current location and teleported to a remote valley. It was a dark and forbidding landscape, ringed about with mountains and shrouded in mist. A menacing tower loomed some distance to the north. Cyren and Azrael materialized by my side in short order, and hurried conference produced no solutions, only a growing certainty that we were in the Misty Valley north of our city, the lair of Balthasaar himself. Fr Isaac and Terrence had remained behind. Three figures appeared on the horizon – two Footmen of impressive dimensions, and a masked, caped or winged figure carrying a large glaive. Though we ducked into the mist as fast as we could, we knew we were seen, as the central figure sent the Footmen ahead to flank us, while he himself approached our position and began thrusting his glaive down into the mist in the hopes of skewering us. At that precise moment, Fr Isaac and Terrence decided to come to our rescue, because who doesn’t need a sickly Librarian on the scene when one is facing a dreadful foe? At least, such was my initial fear for their safety. In fact, we quickly realized that Terrence was the only one among us with the power to reactivate the teleportation circle and bring us to safety, so we set ourselves to the daunting task of keeping him alive long enough to keep us alive. And a dreadful foe he proved to be – he summoned four walls of fire to pin us in place while casting dreadful spells, and the Footmen attacked our source of escape. Fr Isaac was as indispensable as ever, bringing Terrence back from the brink of death no less than three times as he staggered under heavy blows, never losing his concentration on the arcane circle under his feet. Cyren and Azrael were most cunning in their strategems, taking out the fire wall generators, dealing massive amounts of damage and at one point planting a tree which instantly grew 50 feet in the air. Our adversary had the ability to teleport short distances, which enhanced the range of his strikes to a distressing degree. Fr Isaac seemed at one point on the brink of stopping his onslaught altogether with a brilliantly-timed casting of the spell Calm Emotions, but alas, it only gave us a tiny six seconds of breathing room before he remembered that he had hostile intent towards us. When things were looking grim for us, the Tower in the distance awakened. The General before us (for I doubt he ranks any lower than that at the least) cried out in dismay and used every power at his disposal to retreat as quickly as possible, as far from the tower as possible. It was now or never. We gathered on the circle and drank our healing potions as Terrence made one last effort. A huge bolt of dark energy streaked from the tower towards us, and utterly obliterated a piece of the landscape just feet from our tiny sanctuary, and then we were back in the cellar of the house we had left. It was empty of mist, empty of the strange darkness, and empty of Footmen – just an ordinary house. We found High Command in total disarray. The Footmen had turned against the Dwarves, and Ronan had reassumed command. He claimed authority to accept our offer of help, but told us that as far as the fighting went, the Dwarves could handle it for now. What he needed was for us to rescue the Drow prisoners and bring reinforcements. We left our treasure behind, and went to fulfill his request as best we could. Azrael stayed behind with a company of his rangers, but what Azrael does on his own time remains an impenetrable mystery to me, perhaps because I am not sure I want to investigate.